It Was 50 Years Ago Today.....

Unless you have been living under a rock and avoiding all media of late, you know that it was fifty years ago tonight, February 9, 1964, that The Beatles made their historic first live appearance on American television on the Ed Sullivan Show.  A then-record 78 million Americans watched that show, and popular music in America was never the same.

In 2003, there was a DVD set released that contained all four of the Sullivan shows on which The Beatles appeared.  The complete shows, all acts and all of the commercials.  In addition to seeing The Beatles, this set is a remarkable time capsule of American popular culture, and that is what I wish to write about today.

I will say right off the bat, that fifty years later, The Beatles remain incredible.  It never gets old seeing and hearing them sing, and watching them sing live, as they did on the Sullivan shows, is to use a word that they introduced to us, absolutely fab!

As for the Ed Sullivan Show - not so much.

You might often hear older folks waxing nostalgic and saying things like "I wish there were shows like Ed Sullivan's still on today."  Don't believe them. To celebrate this 50th anniversary, and in anticipation of writing this post, last night I watched that Sullivan show from 2/9/64, and I have to tell you, it took all in my power to stay off of the fast forward button.  Here's what you saw:

• The Beatles opened the show and did three numbers.
• They were then followed by a magician doing card tricks.  Card tricks! I kid you not.  Can you imagine the phone call from his agent?  "The good news is I got you a gig on the Ed Sullivan Show.  The bad news is you are following The Beatles."
• Two musical numbers from the Broadway show "Oliver". That wasn't bad, and it did feature, playing the Artful Dodger, a young Davy Jones, the future Monkee.
• Frank Gorshin doing eight - EIGHT! - minutes of bad impressions and unfunny material.
• USA Olympic Terry McDermott introduced from the audience.
• Old bag British music hall performer Tessie O'Shea getting seven - SEVEN! - minutes singing and playing a banjo.  I am not making that up. If ever the past and future of British musical entertainment was in one place at one time, it was the night Tessie O'Shea and The Beatles were on the same a TV show.
• The very unfunny and very forgettable comedy team of McCall & Brill.
• Two more numbers from The Beatles.
• The show closed with an act of acrobats. Again, I am not making that up. I suppose that their agent had the same conversation with them as the magician's.

When I first got this DVD set back in '03, I made the effort to watch all four of the shows in their entirety, and by about mid-way through the third show, I gave up, and went the the FF button to stop on The Beatles and some of the acts that I might have wanted to see.

For over twenty years, the Ed Sullivan Show was "must see TV", but times and tastes change.  Very few forms of entertainment are timeless.  The Beatles are timeless, but there is a reason why there are no Ed Sullivan Shows today.

More on Ralph Kiner

Following up on my last Grandstander post....

• The fact that Kiner lived to the grand age of 91, also means that he pretty much "out kicked the coverage" of his contemporaries.  I am 62 years old and only know of Kiner the Pirate from stories from my Dad and older brothers and their contemporaries.   One would have to be pretty much over 70 years old to have any clear memories of Kiner taking aim at Greenberg Gardens at Forbes Field.
• The sad downside of that fact is that for many, many people today, they only know Kiner as the announcer for the New York Mets.
• It was noted on PTI yesterday that Kiner was quite the celebrity when he was belting all those home runs.  Among some of the fruits of that celebrity were the fact that at one time or another, Kiner dated Ava Gardner, Janet Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor.  That may be more impressive than leading the National League in home runs for seven straight years.

To Absent Friends - Ralph Kiner

Baseball Hall of Famer and all-time Pittsburgh Pirate great Ralph Kiner died yesterday at the age of 91.  As someone on Facebook noted, it is hard to feel sad at the passing of a gent who lived such a full and rich life in his 91 years as did Kiner.  Such a life should be celebrated, and not mourned, said the post.

If you are a Pirates fan, even if, like me, you are one who began following the Bucs well after his career was over, you certainly know all about Ralph Kiner - about all the home run titles, about taking advantage of "Greenberg Gardens" at Forbes Field, and about waiting to leave what was most likely a losing ball game until you saw Kiner get his last at bat in the game.

Many baseball fans today know only of Kiner, one of the New York Mets original broadcasters who was prone to sometimes hilarious malapropisms.  Not if you're a Pirate fan, though.  You know what great player he was - the first truly great power hitter the Pirates ever had.

I don't necessarily believe in this sort of thing, but surely some sort of karmic convergence took place yesterday with Kiner dying on February 6, which is also the birth dates of baseball's first power hitter, Babe Ruth, and the man to whom some current Pirates fans compare Kiner, Pedro Alvarez.

RIP Ralph Kiner.

To Absent Friends - Phillip Seymour Hoffman

What a shock it was yesterday to hear of the death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman at the age of 46.

An Oscar winner for his portrayal of author Truman Capote, Hoffman had been nominated three other times for Academy Awards.  The obituaries online and in the newspapers lists so many of his great roles...a priest in "Doubt", a CIA operative in "Charlie Wilson's War", a baseball manager in "Moneyball", and many other terrific parts that you may have forgotten over the years, but think about it, have you ever seen him in  a movie where he wasn't good? Throw in a Tony Award nomination playing Willie Loman in a revival of "Death of a Salesman" and you are talking about one of the great actors of this generation.

I will also site two other movies that I think are must see:  "The Savages" a movie where Laura Linney and Hoffman play an estranged brother and sister dealing with an aging father, and "Ides of March" where Hoffman plays the campaign manager of George Clooney's presidential candidate.  This was, in my opinion, perhaps the best movie I saw in 2011.

It was doubly sad that Hoffman, a one time drug addict who had reportedly been clean and sober since his mid-twenties, had apparently fallen off the wagon and died from a drug overdose.  What a terrible waste.

RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Hail, Seattle, and Other Super Bowl Thoughts

Well, that was one dud of a game yesterday, wasn't it?  I mean, really, what can be said about it?  But I'll throw some random thoughts at you anyway....

• Denver's first three possessions consisted of eight plays and produced a Seattle safety, a punt, and an interception.  It was four and one-half minutes into the second quarter before Denver made a first down.  I was thinking "this is like the Steelers vs. the Vikings in Super Bowl IX."
• The safety on the first play of the game gave an indication of what was to come, and the kick return for a TD to open the second half effectively ended the game.  The "Denver Super Bowl Champion" hats and t-shirts were already on the planes to Third World countries once Percy Harvin crossed the goal line.
• I thought that Peyton Manning looked every one of his 37 years by half-time.
• That DB Kam Chancellor for the Seahawks - WOW!  And he's only the second best DB for Seattle!
• I could go on and talk about key plays here and there in the game, but why bother?  I mean, how can you single one or two specific plays in an ass-kicking like this? The game was never, not once, in doubt for the Seahawks.

Some other thoughts on events surrounding the actual game...

• That fur coat on Joe Namath for the coin toss - tremendous.  Broadway Joe is still Broadway Joe!
• The weather sure wasn't a factor.  Expect the Super Bowl to return to New York in the next 8-10 years.
• It wasn't until late in the second half that Fox began to show shots of celebrities in the stands (Hugh Jackman, Michael Douglas, Paul McCartney).  This is unusual for Fox, and, thankfully, none of these people were stars of lousy Fox Network sitcoms.
• I was unfamiliar with his work, and I am not about to go out an buy  a bunch of his records (can we still call them "records"?), but I was impressed with Bruno Mars and his halftime show. Very talented and quite entertaining guy.  I only wished that he didn't relinquish a part of his 14 minute show to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• Loved it when, at one point in the third quarter, Troy Aikman essentially said "this game is over."  The Suits at neither the NFL nor Fox had to be happy about that.
• For the umpteenth year in a row, I turned the TV on shortly after 6:00, thus missing the entire four hour pregame drivel.  This is great for one's mental well being.

The commercials. I liked...

• The Chevy Silverado commercial with the bull saying "Hello, ladies."
• Radio Shack, "the 80's called"
• "Gwen quits" for GoDaddy.com
• The Tim Tebow T-Mobile "no contract" commercials
• Bob Dylan for Chrysler.  Great commercial!
• The Budweiser Puppy Love and Returning Hero commercials
• The one with the woman running the tanning salon.  I think it was for GoDaddy.

Did not like....

• David Beckham in his underwear. Those tattoos are awful.
• The VW engineers sprouting wings
• The Steven Colbert pistachio commercial. Kind of creepy.
• Heinz Ketchup "if you're happy and you know it".  I'm sure all those Heinz employees recently let go are glad the company spent $4 million on that lousy commercial.
• The bear in the store eating Chobani Yogurt with a Bob Dylan song playing over it.  Just when I was going to write about how disappointing it was to see Dylan sell out like that, he redeemed himself with that Chrysler spot.
• That two part Bud Light commercial early in the game.  Bud Light usually has some of the best Super Bowl commercials, but those two were big swings and misses this year.

As for my predictions, I called for a Seattle win - check. I said fewer than 50 points would be scored.  Actual total was 51, pretty close.  I said it would be a close game.  Well, you can't win 'em all.

I finished the NFL Post Season with an 8-3 record.  Pretty good.

Congratulations, Seahawks, a most deserving Super Bowl Champion.

Pirates pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton in nine days.

To Absent Friends - Maximilain Schell

Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell died today at the age of 83.

A three time Oscar nominee, Schell won the Best Actor Academy Award in 1962 for his best known role, that of defense attorney Hans Rolfe in Stanley Kramer's "Judgement at Nuremberg".  In a cast that included the likes of Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, and Marlene Dietrich, it was the then 31 year old Schell who out-performed them all and won the Oscar.  

Regular readers know that "Judgement at Nuremberg" is one of my favorites.  A must see for movie fans and students of history alike.




RIP Maximilain Schell

Super Bowl Prediction

So, it was back on September 5 that I wrote in this blog that "the Broncos (would) defeat the 49'ers in a New Jersey blizzard on February 2."

Well, doesn't look like there will be a blizzard, but at this point I have one-third of the equation correct, with a chance to get two-thirds of it right. 

So, I'm gonna go with the Broncos, right?

Well, I know who I want to win and for whom I will be rooting - Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos.  I admit that I am a big fan of Manning's.  I want him to win this game, if for no other reason than to shut up people who think that the only way to evaluate a player's "legacy", a word that has been much overused these last two weeks, is by how many Super Bowl rings he has collected.

And while on that subject, people need also shut up about how many Super Bowls a particular player has won.  Sorry, but Tom Brady has not won three Super Bowls, nor has Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana won four, nor Eli Manning two.  Rather, Brady's (and Bradshaw's, Montana's, and Eli's) teams have won those multiple Super Bowls.  Last time I looked, no team has ever sent only one guy on the field in one of these games.  This same reasoning also applies to the World Series, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup.

But back to the game tomorrow.  I am going to pick the Seahawks in this one.

I am basing this on the old axiom that "offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships."  I think that Seattle has the better defense, and that is how I am picking this one.

I also think that it will be a close game, and that fewer than 50 points will be scored.

Again, I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that Manning undresses Richard Sherman at least once in this game.

Enjoy the game, everyone, and, oh yes, watch, but don't bet.